Culture secretary Tessa Jowell has announced that promising young athletes will get £10,000 scholarships to prepare for the 2012 Olympics.

Jowell told the Labour conference that the move demonstrated the government's commitment to winning those games for London.

Watched by boxing silver medallist Amir Khan, Jowell said: "Sport matters more here than anywhere because nowhere more than here is there such a passion for sport.

"I want that passion to become a passion to bring the Olympic Games to Britain.

"And because we are ambitious, because we are bold, because we are confident, we will not shy from the challenge of staging the world's greatest sporting event in London."

Bid chairman Seb Coe, who was also in the conference hall, heard Jowell launch the scholarship scheme designed to improve London's chances and bring an even bigger medal haul for Britain in the future.

Jowell said the scholarship programme would "ensure that talent - too much of which now falls by the wayside through lack of the means to develop it - will be rewarded".

She also said the government would match the £45 million being given to the grassroots sports body the Football Foundation by the FA and Premiership.

Mayor's address

Jowell's speech was followed by an address from London mayor Ken Livingstone who said hosting the Olympics would revive one of the most deprived parts of Britain.

Speaking at his first Labour conference since being readmitted to the party earlier this year, Ken Livingstone stayed on-message with attacks on the Tories and Lib Dems.

The London mayor said he was "very grateful to be back" and praised the Gordon Brown for providing his office with five-year funding stream for investment.

"Which chancellor is going to give me that? Oliver Letwin? I don't think so," he said.

He also dismissed Charles Kennedy's call for the general election to be a "referendum on Iraq".

"No it's not," Livingstone said. "It is going to be about deciding who will govern this country for the rest of the decade."

Livingstone later told ePolitix.com the speech was his first ever on a conference stage, despite having been a member of Labour's National Executive Committee during his previous spell in the party under Neil Kinnock's leadership.

"In the three years I was on the NEC Neil Kinnock never asked me to make a speech," he said. "I never could get to the rostrum in the old days."

Conservative Olympic bid chief Lord Coe also praised the work of the mayor and prime minister in campaigning for the London games compared to rival cities.

"We had the only political leader at the Olympic Games in Athens and the only political leader at the launch of the bid," he said.

"The role of the mayor is also very important. The International Olympic Committee take very seriously the role of the city, it is the focus of the bid, and the political leadership within that city.

"To have Ken in Athens as well, alongside Tessa and the prime minister was really very important."

The former Tory chief of staff also told ePolitix that he was happy to work with traditional his political rivals.

"The world moves in wonderful ways," he said. "Two weeks ago I addressed the Trade Union Congress, then I spoke to a Cabinet and now I am at the Labour Party conference.

"I hasten to add I am also at the Conservative Party conference on Tuesday."